This is a series, I on the world. I'm John Bachelor. I welcome my colleague Charles

Pellegrino, the author, and at this point, the explainer of the Dark Forest Theory, now current again

because of science fiction being successful on various outlets such as Netflix.

But the Dark Forest theory is not fiction.

It is a case of very logical thinking from the late 20th century about the success of the US and its allies

to reach this point in space travel and this point in understanding the Cosmos and how it's put together and where we are in it,

somewhere on the 4 billion years old forefront of the creation of a solar system as perfect as ours. We've now discovered thousands of exoplanets,

many examples that are not dissimilar to us, and we're still looking for civilizations,

or are we?

And are other civilizations looking for us?

Do they exist?

These questions were part of the Dark Forest Theory.

Charlie, a very good evening to you. It comes to a book that you and your

colleague George Zebrowski published in the late 20th century in 1995, called the Killing Star.

But it starts with the Dark Forest theory

that is the basis for other science fiction

being developed.

What is the Dark Forest theory and whose theory is it?

Good evening to you, Charlie.

Right, that goes back to the 1983 to 1985

and the American Association for the Advancement of Science Conference in May of 1986

where Jim Powell presented the Dark Forest Theory as for how the galaxy, our neighborhood of the galaxy might be if

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